Electronic mail (email) has become an integral part of business and personal communications. As such, many users have multiple email accounts for work and home use. Moreover, with the increased availability of mobile cellular and wireless local area network (LAN) devices that can send and receive emails, many users wirelessly access emails stored in source mailboxes of different email storage servers (e.g., corporate email storage server, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc.).
Yet, email distribution and synchronization across multiple mailboxes and over wireless networks can be quite challenging, particularly when this is done on a large scale for numerous users. For example, different email accounts may be configured differently and with non-uniform access criteria. That is, different user devices will have different capabilities such as the ability to display images, receive file attachments, etc. Moreover, different devices may access the email system through different interfaces (e.g., HTML, WML, etc.). Further, individual user accounts may have different services or features enabled. Accordingly, it may become difficult to maintain service account information when certain events occur, such as a user switching to a different mobile wireless communications device or when a service provider updates service platforms.
Various attempts have been made in the prior art to modify mobile telephone subscriber services. Once such example is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,449,479 to Sanchez. This patent is directed to an apparatus for changing a mobile subscriber's feature profile in a telecommunications network. The apparatus includes a Home Location Register (HLR) with a memory for storing the feature profile, which includes one or more service features, such as call waiting, call blocking, etc. The apparatus also includes a node that communicates electronically with the HLR. The node recognizes a subscriber feature profile change request, validates the request, determines whether the subscriber is currently using the mobile phone to which the profile is assigned, and prevents changes in the profile except for changes specifically requested by the subscriber if the subscriber is not using the mobile phone to which the profile is assigned.
While such systems may be helpful for allowing users to update basic phone service features, a user typically does not have the knowledge or the access required to make changes to information such as device/subscriber identifications (IDs), personal identification numbers (PINs), and device capability settings in wireless email service accounts. As a result, the user typically has to contact a wireless network provider's customer service when switching devices or when system upgrades are made that effect the user's ability to send and receive emails. Not only is this an inconvenience for users, but the increased man hours needed staff a service center to handle large call volumes can be expensive for the network provider as well.